EU Companies Out of Step with Consumer Concerns Over Online Tracking

New TRUSTe privacy research published today shows that across Europe companies are heavily tracking online behaviour, consumers are highly aware of this activity, and consumers expect websites to get their permission before tracking their behaviour online. Yet despite the introduction of the EU Cookie Directive in May 2011, only a minority of companies are seeking consent from users before dropping cookies.

The TRUSTe 2012 EU Consumer Privacy Index is the first study to provide a comprehensive analysis of current consumer attitudes to data privacy and company practices across the EU. The extensive study included over 4,000 consumers (conducted online via Ipsos MORI's i:Omnibus survey in France, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands) and 200 top websites (compiled using TRUSTe's deep scanning website tracker and cookie audit technology to review the top 50 websites as ranked by Alexa.com in each of the four countries).

The headline findings include:

86% of respondents in the Netherlands were aware of internet browser cookies compared with 81% in Great Britain, 78% in Germany and 59% in France.

The top 50 French websites are dropping nearly twice as many third party cookies (434) as Dutch websites (237).

71% of French respondents were very concerned about their privacy online compared with 69% in Great Britain, 62% in Germany and 48% in the Netherlands.

In relation to the EU Cookie Directive, the research showed:

79% of Dutch respondents were aware that the EU Cookie Directive law requires that companies must have your permission to track you online compared with 63% in Great Britain, 51% in Germany and 26% in France.

82% of Germans expect companies to comply with the EU Cookie Directive as do 76% in Great Britain and 62% in the Netherlands.

53% of French respondents expect companies to comply yet 44% plan to only visit websites of companies who comply with the EU Cookie Directive.

12% of the top 50 UK websites and 32% of Dutch websites had taken some steps to comply with the Directive with an onscreen pop-up, banner or tab informing users about cookies on the site. None of the top 50 websites in France or Germany had done this.

EU Managing Director for TRUSTe, Danilo Labovic said:

"This research shows that there is a significant gap between consumer expectations and the experience provided by most companies. The majority of EU consumers are highly knowledgeable about internet cookies and are aware of the pay-off between online targeting from advertisers and receiving free online services, content and games. However they have high levels of privacy concerns and across all four countries, an average of 83%* thought that companies should get their permission before tracking them online.

The consequences of getting this wrong for businesses are significant with 36% in France choosing not to visit a company website due to concerns about their privacy online and 34% in Germany not using a smartphone app due to online privacy concerns. Across all four countries an average of 68%* expect companies to comply with the recent EU Cookie Directive and an average of 41%* plan to only visit websites that do. With the top 50 websites in France and Germany having taken no action to inform visitors on their home page about cookie use and tracking on these sites they appear to be out of step with the concerns of their users.

The good news is that there are measures companies can take to address these concerns. The research also found that 62% in France, 57% in Germany and Great Britain and 49% in the Netherlands agreed that they trusted a website more if they saw a certification or seal indicating privacy approval from an outside organisation."

1 TRUSTe is the leading global provider of data privacy management solutions, offering a broad suite of technologies and certifications to help companies build trust and increase engagement across their online channels, including websites, mobile apps, advertising, and cloud services. Over 5,000 companies, including top international brands like Apple, eBay, LinkedIn and Microsoft, rely on TRUSTe to build trust and address evolving and complex privacy challenges. TRUSTe's green Certified Privacy Seal is widely recognised and trusted by millions of consumers worldwide as a sign of responsible privacy practices. For additional information on TRUSTe please visit http://www.truste.eu

2 Ipsos MORI's i:Omnibus interviewed a representative sample of 4,041 adults aged 16 to 75 across Great Britain, the Netherlands, France and Germany. Those interviewed in Netherlands and Germany were aged 16 to 70; Interviews were conducted online during the 19th to 26thOctober 2012. Data has been weighted to match the profile of each country's population.

* Average results comprise aggregated scores from 4 separate surveys across Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and France. The size of each country's population was not taken into account when aggregating scores across the four markets.

Our guest on the podcast this week is Mark Thiele, EVP of Data Center Technology at Switch.
We discuss the idea that private clouds are often equated with do-it-yourself and why that should be changed.
Taking sure you are receiving the private environment you need at a cost that can support your business.
Listen in to learn the different ways to own and manage a private cloud.

It seems today we are in a constant state of business and technology disruption. The convergence of the social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) disruptions have both forced and enabled organizations to move at breakneck speeds addressing the needs and expectations of the lines of business/end users. This speed requires the development teams to be agile. They must be able to respond quickly to changing needs and demands of the organization. The quality assurance (QA) team still needs to ensure a quality product is being sent into production. Finally, the operations team needs to be able to ...

SYS-CON Events announced today that WHOA.com, an ISO 27001 Certified secure cloud computing company, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON's 16th International Cloud Expo® New York, which will take place June 9-11, 2015, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
WHOA.com is a leader in next-generation, ISO 27001 Certified secure cloud solutions. WHOA.com offers a comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class cloud services for business including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Secure Cloud Desktop, Cloud Storage, Disaster Recovery, Integrated Applications and Security.

OmniTI has expanded its services to help customers automate their processes to deliver high quality applications to market faster.
Consistent with its focus on IT agility and quality, OmniTI operates under DevOps principles, exploring the flow of value through the IT delivery process, identifying opportunities to eliminate waste, realign misaligned incentives, and open bottlenecks. OmniTI takes a unique, value-centric approach by plotting each opportunity in an effort-payoff quadrant, then working with customers to focus on initiatives with high payoff and low effort – using its deep bench of...

In recent years, we’ve watched mobile, cloud technologies and Internet of Things (IoT) enable increased connectivity for every network and every industry, ranging from connected cars to commercial vehicles and fleet management to smart cities to data centers. At MWC, it was clear that professionals in these areas are continuing to make strides in their fields. Below are a few of the major developments we noticed and look forward to hearing more as 2015 progresses.

DevOps is all the rage these days and with good reason as it promises to reduce the time-to-market for new applications. It also promises to improve change management, allowing teams to deploy changes to their applications quickly and efficiently. However, DevOps isn’t something you buy, install, or implement; rather it is the symptom of an appropriate organizational system.
In his session at DevOps Summit, Mark Thiele, EVP, Data Center Technologies at SUPERNAP International, will discuss how to get to the right organizational model that will allow DevOps practices to flourish.

When it comes to microservices there are myths and uncertainty about the journey ahead. Deploying a “Hello World” app on Docker is a long way from making microservices work in real enterprises with large applications, complex environments and existing organizational structures. February 19, 2015 10:00am PT / 1:00pm ET → 45 Minutes Join our four experts: Special host Gene Kim, Gary Gruver, Randy Shoup and XebiaLabs’ Andrew Phillips as they explore the realities of microservices in today’s IT world:

You deployed an app. Nothing has changed in three days, but it suddenly crashes. Why? Memory leak.
You deployed an app. Nothing has changed in three weeks, but it suddenly stops working. Why? A database query came back empty and the web application freaked out trying manipulate a null value, deciding instead to just stop in its track and return nothing.
You deployed a load balancing service. Nothing has changed in three months, but it suddenly stopped load balancing your app. Why? One of the ports on an intermediate switch decided to fry. Literally. It's a black hole and the load balancer ...

This month I want to revisit supporting infrastructure and datacenter environments. I have touched (some would say rant) upon this topic since my post in April 2014 called "Take a Holistic View of Support". My thoughts and views on this topic have not changed at all: it's critical for any organization to have a holistic, comprehensive strategy and view of how they support their IT infrastructure and datacenter environments. In fact, I believe it's even more critical today then it was a year ago when I wrote that blog post.
We work with many different organizations in many different types of i...

It's spring in the Northeast, and this week we're launching a new blog post series, "Everything You Want to Know about Windows Server 2003 Migration." Why a series of posts on WS2003? Even as summer and EOS is just months away, our "State of Readiness for Windows Server 2003 End of Support" survey reveals the shocking truth: most of you haven't done anything about remediation yet, and most will not complete your upgrades before the deadline.

Keeping data from getting out into the wild or being damaged by cyber attackers is what keeps CISOs, the executive team and boards of directors up at night. To protect organizations, cybersecurity needs to be automated and real-time, it needs to learn contextually like we do and it needs to monitor every corner of the network in a way that organizations can afford without sacrificing coverage.

Even though it’s now Microservices Journal, long-time fans of SOA World Magazine can take comfort in the fact that the URL – soa.sys-con.com – remains unchanged. And that’s no mistake, as microservices are really nothing more than a new and improved take on the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) best practices we struggled to hammer out over the last decade. Skeptics, however, might say that this change is nothing more than an exercise in buzzword-hopping. SOA is passé, and now that people are talking about microservices instead, let’s switch out the terminology.

SYS-CON Events announced today the IoT Bootcamp – Jumpstart Your IoT Strategy, being held June 9–10, 2015, in conjunction with 16th Cloud Expo and Internet of @ThingsExpo at the Javits Center in New York City. This is your chance to jumpstart your IoT strategy.
Combined with real-world scenarios and use cases, the IoT Bootcamp is not just based on presentations but includes hands-on demos and walkthroughs. We will introduce you to a variety of Do-It-Yourself IoT platforms including Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, Spark and Intel Edison. You will also get an overview of cloud technologies s...

While recently attending a Dynatrace User Group in Hartford, I had the opportunity to sit in on a great presentation from a leading US insurance company as they explained their three-year APM journey. I see a lot of these success stories, but this one was especially impressive. To see how they have refined their internal processes, successes and performance best practices to ensure delivery of high quality, high performing and highly scalable applications over these years.
The performance engineering group within the large US insurance company was the one that started adopting application per...

Microservice architectures are the new hotness, even though they aren't really all that different (in principle) from the paradigm described by SOA (which is dead, or not dead, depending on whom you ask). One of the things this decompositional approach to application architecture does is encourage developers and operations (some might even say DevOps) to re-evaluate scaling strategies. In particular, the notion is forwarded that an application should be built to scale and then infrastructure should assist where necessary.

The competition among public cloud providers is red hot, private cloud continues to grab increasing shares of IT budgets, and hybrid cloud strategies are beginning to conquer the enterprise IT world.

Big Data is driving dramatic leaps in resource requirements and capabilities, and now the Internet of Things promises an exponential leap in the size of the Internet and Worldwide Web.

The world of SDX now encompasses Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDCs) as the technology world prepares for the Zettabyte Age.

Add the key topics of WebRTC and DevOps into the mix, and you have three days of pure cloud computing that you simply cannot miss.

Cloud Expo - the world's most established event - offers a vast selection of 130+ technical and strategic Industry Keynotes, General Sessions, Breakout Sessions, and signature Power Panels. The exhibition floor features 100+ exhibitors offering specific solutions and comprehensive strategies. The floor also features two Demo Theaters that give delegates the opportunity to get even closer to the technology they want to see and the people who offer it.

Attend Cloud Expo. Craft your own custom experience. Learn the latest from the world's best technologists. Find the vendors you want and put them to the test.